


Lover, Put Me in My Beautiful Bed

by huxualorentation



Category: Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot | They Call Me Jeeg (2015)
Genre: Gypsythug, M/M, Missing Moments, Riccabio, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huxualorentation/pseuds/huxualorentation
Summary: After Nunzia's birthday party, a panicking, emotionally wrecked Fabio is taken care of by the one who has always been there for him. The one who will, perhaps, even find a way back to him in Fabio's final hour of need... alongside someone else.
Relationships: Fabio Cannizzaro | Zingaro/Riccardo
Kudos: 8





	Lover, Put Me in My Beautiful Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Title is an adapted quote from The National's "It Never Happened" (speaking of whom, check my RPF if you're interested!); adapted, in that the line goes "lover, put me in your beautiful bed", while in the fic it's his own bed at his own place that Fabio asks Riccardo to take him to (and I totally see Fabio having a beautiful bed: impeccably clean, and also quite luscious, after all the poverty he has endured as a kid).

I know the men like you... You'll laugh at me, and then you'll search for any opportunities for 'casually' touching me, _I think as I sing. Antonio, flanked by a busty girl, has just laughed aloud after calling me beautiful._

_Almost drowning the lyrics, by the way._

_Perhaps it's a good thing that I've not become the performer I used to dream of becoming: I have not a lot of tolerance for the noises an audience makes._

_What does the future have in store for me, then? A poor old sod from my neighborhood, who prides himself on having fortune-telling skills, has once told me,_ You'll escape a death by fire, young Zingaro, only to meet your fate in the water.

"Sergio has gone missing."

Yeah, and the show must go on.

Fabio may have not become a performer, but he always follows that rule in everyday life. For the rest of the evening, he smiles his charming smile at Nunzia and at her men, keeping up a pleasant conversation, despite his panic over the alarming news as well as his tiredness from the amateurial performance into which he has put as much effort as if it were a professional one.

The crimelady must be tired from the car ride to Rome, though, because it's not very long before she calls it a night, enabling Fabio to do the same. Thank God for small mercies.

And for _huge_ mercies. Such as having someone by his side who, despite being a grumpy Mary Contrary, has never been in the awful habit of bestowing _I told you so_ s. 

What is he going to say instead, this time?

"You're tired, Fabié. Just go get a good night's sleep now, okay? Tomorrow we'll set this right."

Once again, he has said the words that Fabio needed to hear. Fabio wants to cry in his arms like he did so many times when they were younger... but that Riccardo was different, full of dreams and plans just like Fabio, impossible to be imagined to ever grow into a disillusioned man.

"Riccà."

"Shit happens, Fabié. Don't worry about it now. There's a time for everything, and now you need to rest."

"I am so tired, Riccà."

"And what did I just say? To bed with you, chop-chop!"

Fabio takes some deep breaths to nip the urge to cry in the bud. 

"Yes?"

"Yes," Fabio manages to say. "Take me... take me to bed." Then he bursts into a hysterical laughter. "I don't... I don't mean... I'm not... in the mood..."

"Hey, hey, of course you aren't. As I said, there's a time for everything. I'll take you home and help you to bed and leave, okay? Help you to bed after you have removed all that makeup, that is."

No sooner has Fabio's head touched the pillow that he, much to his frustration and shame, starts sort of convulsing, the tension catching up with him at last; he shakes, tosses his head, gasps, and loses his control over his tears. His crying is, at the same time, a frightened boy's and a desperate man's. No judgement in Riccardo's eyes, just a collected resolve as he softly talks Fabio out of that headspace, gently urging him to sleep so that he's "ready to fight for what is theirs" tomorrow. Theirs. They're in this together.

Desire, too, in Riccardo's eyes. For Fabio is breathtakingly beautiful even now. But he doesn't act upon his desire: there's a time for everything.

"We'll be all right, sweet Zingaro, sweet Fabio," he murmurs. "Yes. Yes, you are sweet. And no less of a warrior for that."

He gets up from where he's sitting on the goose comforter on Fabio's bed.

"But oh, I have not answered your question. You asked me if I had liked your performance. Yes. Yes, I did."

* * *

_It's deep in the night and I'm vomiting as I shake from my fever. What with all that has been happening in the last hours, I can't remember when I have eaten last time, but I vomit all the same, throwing up a black bile. I want to stand up, to walk, to be stronger than this sickness. I am not a mollycoddle. I never stay in bed when I am sick._

Be still, Fabié. You are not yet fit to go anywhere. There's a time for everything.

_Is that..?_

Riccardo...? Riccardo!

_Am I, am I forgiven?_

Sshh. I absolve you. I absolve you. Your hands are clean.

_And then I sleep, and when I wake up Riccardo is no longer here, but there's a woman, green-eyed like me. My mother, perhaps? I've never known her. I made quite the dramatic entrance: as I left her body, she died. My father kept no photos. Because he had loved her so much that he could not bear the memories, I loved to think when I was just that high; because he had never loved her, I understood very soon._

_So I have no idea who this woman is. But if she's my mother, I want to make her proud. I try to tell her as much, but I can't speak. So I tell her silently, and she understands. She smiles._

_How beautiful she is._


End file.
